Zhu De

Early Life and Military Education

Zhu De was born on 1 December 1886 in Ma'an Chang, Yilong County, Sichuan, one of eight children in a tenant-farming family. At age two, owing to the family's size and poverty, he was given up for adoption to his childless uncle Zhu Shilian and his wife. In 1907 he entered a physical-education academy attached to a normal school in Chengdu, graduating the following year to teach PE back in his home county. In November 1909 he enrolled instead at the Yunnan Military Academy, joining the Tongmenghui while there, and graduated early with the special class in August 1911, immediately joining the Xinhai Revolution that broke out that same month. Over the following decade he rose to brigade-commander rank in Yunnan and Sichuan warlord forces, winning distinction in battle, but also developed an opium addiction; according to his own recollections and some accounts, he resolved to break the habit and leave the warlord life after the deaths of several close relatives, though the exact circumstances of his recovery — including whether he was treated in a Shanghai hospital — are inconsistently reported across sources. In 1922 he first sought CCP membership in Shanghai but was turned down by Chen Duxiu because of his warlord background; that November, in Berlin, he was introduced into the Party by Zhang Shenfu and Zhou Enlai — the turning point of his life. He went on to study in Berlin and at the University of Göttingen, was arrested twice by German police (the second time for organising protests after the May 30th Incident of 1925), and was released through the intervention of German Reichstag deputy Wilhelm Pieck, though his passport was confiscated and he was forced to leave the country. He moved to the Soviet Union in 1925, studying at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in Moscow while secretly receiving Red Army military training, before returning to China in 1926.

Founding the Red Army

Zhu De was a central figure in the Nanchang Uprising of 1 August 1927 — the event the PRC commemorates as the founding of the People's Liberation Army. Before the uprising, he nominally commanded a roughly 1,000-strong officer training regiment and concurrently served as Nanchang's police chief, a position that gave him detailed intelligence on enemy troop dispositions; on the eve of the uprising, drawing on his old ties to two Nationalist regimental commanders garrisoned in the city from their shared days at the Yunnan academy, he hosted them at a banquet and card game to keep them distracted while the uprising force moved into position. He was named deputy commander of the 9th Army the day before the uprising and promoted to commander after it. When the uprising failed, he led the surviving forces south and then, in April 1928, joined Mao Zedong's unit on Jinggang Mountain. The resulting 'Zhu-Mao Army' (朱毛红军) became the nucleus of the Chinese Red Army. Zhu De served as Commander-in-Chief — a title he would hold, at least nominally, for the next two decades — while Mao provided political direction.

Marriage and Family

Zhu De was married six times over the course of his life. In 1905 he wed his cousin Liu Congzhen in an arranged marriage; he left for military service in Yunnan shortly afterward, and she lived out her life alone in their home county, dying in 1958. Around 1912, while in Yunnan, he married Xiao Jufang, who died of illness in 1919; she was the mother of his son Zhu Qi, born in 1916. He subsequently married Chen Yuzhen. In 1928, during the Southern Hunan Uprising, he married Wu Ruolan in Leiyang, Hunan; on 12 February 1929, as the Red Army moved from Jinggangshan toward southern Jiangxi, Wu was captured in fighting near Ganzhou and executed by Nationalist forces shortly afterward. Zhu De cultivated a lifelong passion for orchids thereafter, growing and writing poetry about them extensively, widely understood as a memorial to her; in his later years he kept over a thousand potted orchids at Zhongnanhai, a collection eventually transferred to the Beijing Botanical Garden (Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences) for professional care, and a cultivar was named 'Zhu De Orchid' in his honour. In 1929, in southern Jiangxi, he married Kang Keqing, twenty-six years his junior; she remained with him until his death in 1976. Kang had no biological children of her own and raised Zhu Qi and Zhu De's daughter Zhu Min to adulthood; Zhu Qi later gave up his military rank to work as an ordinary railway employee.

Long March and the Yan'an Years

Zhu De commanded Red Army forces through the Long March (1934–35), the gruelling 12,500-kilometre strategic retreat that became the founding myth of the CPC. In June 1935, after the First and Fourth Front Armies met at Maogong and Mao'ergai in Sichuan, the combined forces were reorganised into Left and Right Route Armies: Zhu De moved with the Left Route Army under Zhang Guotao, while Mao and the Party Centre moved with the Right Route Army. That October, Zhang Guotao declared a rival 'Central Committee' in Sichuan, naming himself chairman — a split that was not resolved until June 1936. Historians disagree on how to characterise Zhu De's role during this period: official CCP Party history emphasises his principled resistance from within Zhang's camp, including a proposal to defuse the split by dividing the leadership into separate 'Southern' and 'Northern' bureaus; some Western academic accounts instead describe him more neutrally as a passive companion to the Left Route Army's march, without necessarily attributing active resistance to him. Which framing more accurately reflects events remains an open question this account does not resolve. In the cave-city of Yan'an, he oversaw the expansion and professionalisation of communist military forces, remaining the uncontested military figurehead of the communist movement.

War of Resistance Against Japan

When full-scale war with Japan erupted in 1937, Zhu De commanded the Eighth Route Army in the north, directing guerrilla operations across Shanxi, Hebei, and Shandong. He orchestrated the Hundred Regiments Campaign (百团大战) in 1940 — the largest offensive operation the Red Army mounted against Japanese forces — though the campaign's strategic wisdom was later contested within the Party. His role was primarily operational and symbolic: holding together a coalition of commanders under difficult conditions with limited central supply.

Civil War and the Order to Cross the Yangtze

As Commander-in-Chief through the final phase of the Civil War, Zhu De co-signed with Mao Zedong the Order to Advance on the Entire Front (向全国进军的命令) on 21 April 1949 — the document that set in motion the crossing of the Yangtze River by over one million PLA soldiers. His role by this stage was primarily symbolic authority rather than operational command; day-to-day direction rested with field commanders such as Chen Yi, Liu Bocheng, and Su Yu. Nevertheless, his signature on the order represented the institutional legitimacy of the PLA.

Post-1949: Chairman of the NPC

After 1949, Zhu De served as one of the six Vice-Chairmen of the Central People's Government. In September 1954, under the newly adopted constitution, the post of PRC Vice Chairman was created, and he was elected to it. He was awarded the rank of Marshal (元帅) in 1955 — first among the Ten Marshals. At the Second National People's Congress in April 1959, Zhu De's standing reportedly positioned him as a plausible successor to Mao as head of state; according to some accounts, he instead proposed Liu Shaoqi for the post and himself took the chairmanship of the NPC Standing Committee, a largely ceremonial but symbolically significant office he then held continuously until his death in 1976. He was a consistent voice for moderation during the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Great Leap Forward, though he did not openly resist Mao.

Cultural Revolution and Death

During the Cultural Revolution, Zhu De was denounced by Red Guards as a 'big warlord and big ambitionist' (大军阀、大野心家) and subjected to public criticism sessions. According to some accounts, when Red Guards once planned to drag him forcibly to a mass struggle session, Zhou Enlai learned of the plan, consulted Mao, and had his secretary instruct Qi Benyu to cancel the scheduled 'Criticise and Denounce Zhu De' rally, which was never held as a result; he is accordingly believed to have received a measure of tacit protection from Mao and Zhou, retaining his Politburo seat throughout and facing a considerably milder ordeal than Liu Shaoqi or Peng Dehuai. He survived the period by retreating into silence and making ritual self-criticisms. His historical standing was never permanently damaged — he was too deeply identified with the founding of the PLA to be fully repudiated. Zhu De died in Beijing at 3:01 p.m. on 6 July 1976, of heart failure brought on by a cold and complicated by diabetes, aged 89, roughly two months before Mao Zedong. Public mourning was held on 9–10 July, and a memorial service took place at the Great Hall of the People on 11 July, presided over by Wang Hongwen with a eulogy delivered by Hua Guofeng. He was among the last of the founding generation of the PRC.